I have been self aware since I could remember. The biggest obstacle was growing up the ugly duckling and the one who was always getting picked on. I was awkward and never fit in in to any particular group, I still don't fit in. Even in San Francisco where everyone is welcome, I feel like the black sheep and I don't fit in. The leather/BDSM community that I have championed this whole time, does not except me with open arms; instead I get, "Who does he think he is?" It hurts, but who cares...? I stopped caring a whole five lifetimes ago.
I'm sorry i'm not a passive aggressive punk- ass bitch like the rest of you, I'm as real to real life as any of you is ever going to get.
There are many worlds that we never touch on any given day. Most people go about their mundane lives day by day.. never changing anything until the day they die; incomplete and unhappy. I however have journeyed in to a lot of worlds, many of which I have never been to again, and some which I have championed and some that I have mastered. there is few people who could best me at what I do.
I wasn't even born in this country! I'm from the southern part of Mexico, the half-breed child of a Mexican and a Brazilian woman. When I came to America, I found out quick, this was not the land of milk and honey or even the land of dreams, especially since I'm of a darker hue. Sorry to break it to you pacifists, but if you are darker than caucasian, you get royally fucked in America. I have been racially profiled SO MUCH! It's expected.
I grew up in Chicago, and I'm not talking Michigan Avenue. I'm talking La Villita, West side Chicago, and my favorite and my most pride; Humbold Park. I'm not a child of privilege, I'm the ghetto children most of you just read about. I'm a statistic from the moment I set foot on American soil. I remember being a kid and fighting on the street. I remember getting jumped behind my house by neighborhood boys and being stripped of clothes and dignity. I remember trying to talk to several guys trying to jump my ass out in a dark street, telling them, "NO! I'm not a King!" I remember looking over my back as I walked in to Maniac territory, HOPING that I ran in to a familiar face instead of a stranger. I am what your parents tried to scare you with... I lived the live you only thought you could handle. Fights, weapons, drugs, and deaths.
My best friend said to me once, "Everyone gets old, if you are lucky." I lost SO many people along the way to stupid things. Stupid rivalries and bad decisions. I'm alive today because I was able to fight off the world around me.
I'm forged by fire full-on. I'm a veteran of war.. shot out of the sky by ground to air missiles and even had my chow hall blown up in Operation Iraqi Freedom.. I'm hardened by life. I'm a hard person, my exterior is callous. I have had to fight every step of the way.. fairly by the people who confronted me and chose to fight me man-to-man, fist to fist.. and unfairly by those who hide behind protocol and law. Fuck if i'm not tired of it.
I'm tired of being a second class citizen. I hate having done so much for my country and nation only to be treated like shit by the people in my every day life. I couldn't even get a job when I separated from the military, which is why i turned to porn. I have been hard trained by my life and then by the U.S. government to be a fighter, to be a weapon.. and then to be treated like common trash by the common man.. I heard it once said, "It's harder to be a king with out a crown (someone who has tasted) than to be someone who has never been there before.
I have tasted a worlds that most people only read about in Time Magazine or the Herald, and frankly I get so worn out trying to be such a good and kind person to a world who does not deserve it.
I was training to be a nurse, and I was a paramedic for a while.. I thought, maybe if I can help the world around me, I could make a difference. You know what I learned? You don't need to be helped. Especially since I was taking so much of the load on myself. Why should I be the victim of unemployment, poverty, domestic abuse, etc? Where is my charity? where is my worthy cause?? nowhere that's where...
None of you know, I was the first medical team who arrived in New Orleans during Katrina.. helping people out of the water and making sure they got care. I was the one who walked in the terminal with cards deciding who got care and who was left to die. You none know that I spent my nights working in the expectant room/morgue to get some peace and quiet. Having people die in my arms hour after hour... none of you know I took my turn in the middle east watching as the people around me never returned once the left for patrol.. none of you know that I was the last person some people saw.
I always wanted to go to New Orleans, I romanticized it for years from the books I read, and the only time I went was when it was under water.
I can't even get anyone to take me for Southern Decadence today.. I'm not part of the crew.. If you only knew how much that hurts me.. I don't care about the debauchery that goes on, i just want to have a good memory of it instead of the chaos I know.
I'm so hard on the inside and out. I don't know how else to be.
You might be wondering what set me off tonight, and it's this.. people are so rude. I ask and ask, i'm nice and nice.. but it always get to the point where some stupid faggot or some loud mouth bitch wants to take it to another revel... they want to run their mouth and say what ever they want... if they only knew how much strength it takes not to take them apart. I have all the anatomy and hand to hand combat experience it takes for me to take you out in two moves or less... It's so much more strength for me not to fight than to fight... it's so much more of a fight to scare you off than to bring you down.
If I can get one point across it's this... be civil, treat people well, you never know someone's history or where their boots have walked. Nothing would bring me more satisfaction than to release the inner animal i fight day and night to keep locked and chained.. an hell what does jail have I don't want??? square meals and all the man to man action i can handle.. ;) However the man who lives in my head the, Jiminy Cricket inside me says, "Be kind, forgive, and turn the other cheek..." if I didn't have the desire to be a virtuous man working for the greater good... I could easily be your cell mate. Please be kind to each other.. the world is so terrible as it is, there is no reason why we should be fighting one another. I have seen all aspects of life.. everything you could possibly think of, I've walked there. Don't be another incident, and be humane. Learn love...
Love,
Leo
A picture of me at Louis Armstrong International Airport at 19yrs old, soon after we had cleared it for patient evacuation after hurricane Katrina. There were helicopters none stop day in and day out in the air and on the ground bringing in refugee after refugee for days.. I have walked where you would never dare.. be kind to me as I have been to you.
I feel your pain. I have never suffered near what you have. I am fortunate to have white skin. But I am a woman and for that have gone through some discrimination, but it pales to what you have been through, I am sure. I do understand your struggle to be a good man, even though others are rude or even mean. I do that in my life also. But I am not equipped as you are with training to use my hands as weapons. There is really no way I can comprehend entirely how it feels to be you. But I applaud your efforts to do the right thing and hold on to the goodness. There are good people out there Leo; people that mean well in life. Perhaps we will never be rich, but we can be happy. find yourself a like minded person and be happy with them. Maybe they can heal your anger against the world [though the world is a fucking bigoted mess and deserves it!].
ReplyDeleteWe met at IML in Chicago. I could sense your trepidation, but I did not know the source of it. Now I understand.
http://suefairview.com/
Leo, I totally get it. I have been black in America for almost 55 years and it ain't a lot of fun sometimes. I am angry, bitter and often enraged because of what black people have to deal with here and abroad. That said, we ain't going anywhere and they will just have to deal with that.
ReplyDeleteI look at someone as beautiful as you and think, "He's got everything and I hope he knows it." Reading your passages here, it saddens me to think you have felt "less than." Stay strong. I wish you much good fortune on your journey.
Jim
This is Mr. Maki......This is fantastic,..Amalia and i just read this...We..Miss you!!...You always elevated the class and everyone in it... You were a Shining star in International Cuisine and Baking...
ReplyDeleteThe best portion of a good man's life - his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love. ~William Wordsworth
ReplyDeleteYou have had such a hard life and still you are kind and generous. That makes you a far better person than any of those people who feel they have the right to judge you or treat you badly. Meeting you was a highlight during my time in Chicago.You were sweet and payed attention to me the same as you did everyone else, and I'll always remember that. We all want to be accepted. Continue to be the wonderful person that you are.
Wishing you love and peace in your future.
Barb
I LOVE YOU!
ReplyDeleteHello, My Friend:
ReplyDeleteI just read this, and felt the need to respond. There's actually so much I can say, and I hope one day we get a chance to sit together over a bottle of wine and really talk about it all.
It's such a hard thing to feel alone, to feel like you're not a part of something. I've felt it for years and years, and the only thing I can do is walk through my fear anyway, and somehow know that I am worthy, that I am enough.
I was at the WTC on 9/11. That shattered my life, until I met the love of my life some years later, who then died in my arms 3 days after Christmas in 2009. And one of the many things that those two experiences taught me is something so simple... everyone has a story. We walk down the street every day and encounter thousands of people, never even glancing twice. But every one of those people is wounded, like me.
And when I feel slighted or hurt by a statement, a look, a neglect, I try to tell myself that these people are wounded and hurting, and they just don't know how to deal with it, and happily, I am learning how to... slowly.
Sending you much love, and hoping to take you to my favorite Puerto Rican restaurant in Chicago in August!
Michael V
Leo,
ReplyDeleteThank you from the bottom of my heart for your service to the country and to us, even if it seems like most of the time neither are deserving of your service. I'm in no position to say yo entiendo hermano. I'm as white as they come. And while I grew up in a working class family, my time in Chicago was in a university and in wealthy neighborhoods. However, I have felt the horrible rejection at the hands of the gay "community" ever since I came out. Your feelings of rejection and exclusion hit a nerve and I wanted to say to you, at least - I have an idea about your pain, and I've felt something like it too. What's so interesting for me is how wrong my assumptions about your life were. I'd never known about your past, and can easily imagine the hardships of someone who isn't White in this society. But I would have imagined, due to my own admiration of the physical side of you that I've seen, that you'd be incredibly popular. How wrong, and stupid I was...and it shouldn't surprise me. With the exception of rare times like Stonewall and early AIDS activism, the gay world cannot seem to accept people that don't fit a certain Chelsea/WeHo/Castro model. Being a fat boy, I'm excluded from their circles. I'm not hairy either, so that tends to exclude me from the bear community. I hate the labels that gay men and society at large place on others. But if we are ever going to become a better, more open society, we have to get over the labels and recognize that we all are strong and fragile; we all have hopes and fears, we all have gifts and need help; and we all have love to give. Thank You Leo - for reminding me why I continue to fight for equal rights for all people under the law and in society. I hope someday to meet and and shake you hand. You'd be an amazing person to know better! Peace and Love, Drew